


Half Timing, Half Luck

by Callico



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Michael Buble whoops, Past Finn Collins/Clarke Griffin, Past Finn Collins/Raven Reyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 14:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6523753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callico/pseuds/Callico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Octavia snatches a paper from Clarke’s desk. “You’ve met my brother?”</p><p>“Bellamy?” Clarke blinks for a moment, realizing she hasn’t. “We talked on the phone once but, huh, I guess I haven’t actually met him.”</p><p>“Good for you, he’s an ass. This kind of looks like him though.” Octavia holds up the printout from Clarke’s evolutionary biology course, where black ballpoint pen depicts a freckled nose and dark eyes beside a particularly boring graph. “He’s got those stupid freckles,” Octavia adds, passing a hand lazily across the area of her own face where such ornamentation would be.<br/>--<br/>College AU documenting all the times that Bellamy and Clarke’s lives cross before they actually meet. Clarke is an undergraduate in Octavia's year; Bellamy is a grad student.<br/>(Previously titled "Very Yellow White Flash")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**The Princess**  
(August 2014)

Bellamy and Octavia ordered Chinese from what Bell’s new landlord swore was the “best for a good price in all of Arkadia”. They are sitting on the floor because what furniture he does own is still in the back of the truck. They had spent all day moving O’s things into her new dorm room and there was absolutely no energy left in either of them. It had been a fight to even meet the delivery guy on the ground floor. Regardless of exhaustion, Bellamy is happy. He thinks the next few years at Ark University will go well.

“If my roommate doesn’t like the carpet, do you want it here?”

Bellamy just blinks at his sister. “I think my roommates are more likely to take issue with a purple striped carpet than yours is.”

“It’s chevron, Bell. I swear, I’ll get you to recognize style if it kills me.”

“Good luck. Anyway, she better like it. It took me fifteen minutes to find room for that thing in the truck.”

“I think she will, she seems really cool. She’s supposed to get here tomorrow.”

“Did you ever find out who the princess with the moving crew is?” Bellamy steals a piece of sesame chicken and gets a death glare.

“Watch it, big brother; I will blind you with these chopsticks.” She clicks the feared weapon in his face. “And no, but I think she’s on my floor. I don’t understand how someone has an entire U-Haul full of stuff, or where she expects to fit it all. The dorms they give freshmen are tiny.”

Bellamy doesn’t remind her that it’s bigger than the room she grew up in. He feels like that time is finally ending. If he can just make it through these last few years of school, they’ll be set.

\---

 **Clarke is a Girl**  
(January 2015)

“She hooked up with him and he has a girlfriend?!”

Bellamy wonders if everyone in the quad can hear his sister’s half of the phone call or if he is just particularly attuned to her voice.

“Oh no! Poor girl” she continues in a voice that’s too excited to sound truly sympathetic. She’s almost to him now, but still far enough away that he shouldn’t be able to hear her so clearly. Bellamy was never able to ingrain the value of discretion into his little sister. He rolls his eyes once Octavia is close enough to see it. “I gotta go, Bell’s here. Yeah, lunch. No, I can still meet you, it’ll just be second lunch. Yeah. Bye, bitch.” She hangs up the phone and jumps at him in a hug.

“Hey, O,” he laughs into her hair.

“I’m so glad you’re not a soulless douchebag.”

“Ah…me too?”

“This dick guy, Finn-”

“Finn?”

“Yeah, right? Douchebag name; we should have known from the start. Well he transferred this semester from DSU and he had a girlfriend there but we didn’t know it; Finn has been messing around with Clarke for a month or so and this morning his girlfriend showed up as a surprise. And Clarke was in his bed!”

Bellamy can’t the laugh that bursts from him.

“Bell, this isn’t funny! Clarke is really broken up over it!”

“Sorry, sorry,” he gasps. “It’s just, come on, that’ must be the worst way to find out your boyfriend is into dudes.”

“Bellamy!” Octavia punches him in the shoulder. “Two people are broken hearted, you shithead! And, for the record, Clarke is a girl. She’s the princess on my hall, remember?”

“Okay, I’m sorry, geeze! To make it up to you, I’ll buy.”

O shoulders him roughly on her way into the dining hall. “Your commuter plan doesn’t work in this dining hall, genius.”

As payback for his “insensitivity”, Octavia fills Bellamy in on every detail of the Clarke/Finn/Raven affair as it plays out over the next month.

 

\---

 **Hair Die**  
(February 2015)

Octavia is on the phone when she lets him in. She waves a red-coated hand at him in a dismissive motion; there are smudges of the color on her face and neck too.

“Who did you kill?”

“Don’t shit yourself, it’s just hair die,” she said, before returning the phone to her ear. “My brother’s here.”

“You died your hair?”

“Does it look like I died my hair? No, idiot, we died Clarke’s hair.” She jerks the phone away with a grimace.

“Did you also bathe in it?”

To the phone she says, “Well, then you shouldn’t have made the bet!” Then to Bellamy, “No, but Clarke woke up halfway through and the die went everywhere. By the way, I need a new carpet.”

There is a shout from the phone simultaneous with Bellamy’s.

“You died her hair while she was unconscious?!”

“Hey, don’t get mad, she-,” O redirects her voice, “you lost a fair bet and refused to accept the consequences. Therefore, they were forced upon you.” Pause. “Oh don’t be such a weenie, it’s temporary.” Pause. “Your have that on Thursday? No worries, by then it will just look ginger. I’m hanging up now.”

“O, what did you call me here for?”

His sister opens the door further. She wasn’t kidding about needing a new carpet. She had also added a shade of crimson to her duvet.

“I need help cleaning.”

 

\---

 **Clarke is a Girl part 2**  
(February 2015)

There are plenty of ways Bellamy would like to be spending his Saturday night, and this is not one of them. It’s not that he doesn’t like spending time with Octavia—he really has missed it since she started college—but shuttling her around town and lingering inside various art studios is one of the last things he wants to be doing. His pain is exaggerated by the stuffy gallery viewers, who make outlandish claims about what is honest-to-god no more than a white canvas and look at him in his faded jeans with disdain, paired with the texts from Miller of exactly what (and who) he’s missing out on at the bar. But O needs the extra credit for her modern art course, so he’s sticking it out.

He’s just received the third photo in a series featuring a brunette occupying Murphy’s lap in decreasing amounts of clothing when someone clears their throat behind him.

“Can I help you?” His voice is gruff and not at the whisper level of the room’s other occupants, but he doesn’t really give a shit.

The girl behind him is wearing a tag that declares her the artist of the exhibit and an expression that would put even his bitchiest ex-girlfriend to shame. She’s got a heavy amount of eyeliner around her stony blue eyes.

“You’re blocking the view, and if all you plan on observing this evening if your phone then I would request that you not take up space at my viewing.”

A response is broiling in Bellamy but he is cut off by his sister’s pointedly-timed entrance.

“Lexa, it’s nice to see you,” she greets, though her tone makes it clear that this meeting is more necessary than pleasant. She links her arm around Bellamy’s. “This is my brother, Bellamy. He’s grad student here. Bell, this is my T.A., Lexa. She’s also Clarke’s girlfriend.”

He can’t remember meeting a Clarke. It takes him a moment to remember the incident with the cheating ex-boyfriend from all those weeks ago.

“This is the Clarke who is a girl?”

“Excuse me?” He’s surprised when the stuck-up artist speaks, even more so by the malice in her voice, and can’t formulate a response before she turns to his sister. “Look, Octavia, I am happy you came by tonight and I will give you the extra credit points, but I will appreciate it when you don’t bring your close-minded brother to any future events.”

The girl turns and leaves a beet-red Octavia behind; she’s pulled him out into the street before he can blink.

“God, she’s such a bitch,” she shouts. “I can’t believe Clarke is with her!”

“Damn, I can’t believe she just jumped to a conclusion like that.”

“Typical Lexa. In class last week when Clarke brought her to meet the crew, she snubbed Jasper because he called her old when she didn’t have to use a fake. What the hell kind of person can’t take a joke, and from Jasper!”

“Alright, O, let’s get out of here before you blow up. Did you get everything you needed?”

She nods. “Thanks for bringing me.”  
“You can thank me by being dd.” Twenty minutes later he steels that girl right out of Murphy’s lap.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Octavia points to the hidden face in the photo.  
> "This is Bellamy."  
> Clarke doesn’t need any more introduction than that. Half the time Bellamy seems like a looming threat in Octavia’s life, and the other half he seems like a guardian angle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter skips between points of view multiple times. It also goes back in time a bit from the previous chapter.

\---  
**Sugar and Spice**  
(October 2014)

Clarke has not had a roommate in a week, ever since Ella dropped out, and until now she’s been basking in the enormity of the room with one less occupant. But tonight she is feeling the emptiness of it for the first time. Her mood is made worse by he fact that it is Friday and she has nowhere to go. She has already painted her nails, fixed her eyebrows, rearranged everything in her desk, hung posters, and watched two episodes of House.

Her empty water bottle gives her an excuse to wander into the hallway; she doesn't know what she expects to happen but just being out of the room for a few paces is refreshing. On the way back from the fountain, she nearly has a heart attack when the door to 318 swings open. The girl with the huge smile practically bounces into the hallway.

“Can you do henna?” Clarke is the only one in the hallway so it makes sense that the girl is talking to her, but she is still surprised.

“Um, yeah,” she responds eventually.

“Spectacular, are you busy?” She doesn’t even wait for an answer, just grabs Clarke by the wrist and pulls her into the room. “We’re getting ready for a ‘sugar and spice’ themed party, and Harper bought henna but neither of us is any good. See?”

She holds up a wrist, displaying an image that might have resembled a flower if it were a common practice to put flowers through the microwave.

“I’m Octavia by the way,” she says extending a hand that hasn't been marked with henna for a shake.

“Clarke.”

“Nice to meet you Clarke. You busy tonight?”

“No, actually.”

“Great! You can join us. Harper, this is Clarke.”

The room’s other occupant waves at Clarke from the top bunk. For the next forty-five minutes she covers their arms in henna. Harper gets a design around her eye and Octavia commissions one on her chest.

“Don’t you have brunch with your brother tomorrow,” Harper asks when her roommate requests this.

Octavia waves her hand dismissively. “He can climb a tree and stay there for a year. It’s not like I’m getting any real ink. But… maybe don’t put it too low.”

Clarke must have the question written on her face because Octavia elaborates quickly.

“My brother is… a bit over-protective.” Harper snorts from the bed. Octavia throws a sandal at her. “He’s here for graduate school so I have to tiptoe around sometimes, but he mostly leaves me alone.”

After looking at her wardrobe, Octavia declares that Clarke is going as “sugar” rather than “spice”. That’s how Clarke ends up going to her first frat party of college. It is no higher in quality than the ones she used to drag Wells to in high school, but the music is better and the booze is more abundant and Octavia’s friends are fun.

 

\---  
**Elevator**  
(November 2014)

Bellamy presses the call button with his elbow, shifting the load in his arms to do so. Much to Bellamy’s relief, there is someone already in the elevator when the doors open.

“What floor,” asks the girl.

“Five, please.” She pushes the button for him.

As the elevator makes its journey, Bellamy looses feeling in his fingers. This is what he gets for trying to carry it all in one trip. The load is more than just heavy, it also manages to obstruct his vision. He internally groans when they stop on the fourth floor and the other rider steps off. Unable to push the “close door” button, he watches the blonde girl walk away until the elevator finally shuts.

 

\---  
**Octavia’s desk**  
(January 2015)

There are only two photos on Octavia’s desk, and both have a way of captivating Clarke.

The first is a standard school photo. Its subject is a dark-haired boy with light eyes that stand out against the classic gaudy blue background. The image itself is relatively uninteresting; what catches Clarke's eye is the black ribbon taped to the frame.

The other is interesting on an artistic level. It's a candid selfie-style shot of laughing Octavia and another subject, but their faces are out of focus. Instead the camera has metered on the palm that hides the other person's features. Every detail in the palm is stark, from the standard creases to the freckle at the base of the pinky. It's not an overly bright or colorful shot and Clarke thinks it would be even more lovely if it were in black and white.

For all the time Clarke has spent in this room and looking at these images, she's never once asked about them. Whether it is the awkwardness of touching on a subject that involves a black memorial ribbon or an enjoyment of the mystery, something has held her back until now and she didn't even realize.

“Hey, who are the people in these photos?”

Octavia approaches and picks up the boy’s photo first. One of the great things about Octavia wearing her emotions on her sleeve is that Clarke can usually gauge at least half of what she is going to say before the words have even begun. The coming tone is set by O's light touch as she lifts the the frame and furrowed brow.

“This is Atom. We were friends in high school, and we dated for a while. He… he died junior year, hit by a drunk driver.”

“I’m so sorry,” Clarke says.

“Everyone always says that; it’s not your fault. We weren’t dating at that point but everyone gave me all the pity anyways. Fucking awful. Still, I keep this around.” She puts down the photo and picks up the next. As always, her mannerisms flip like a switch. Her smirk is bright.

“This is Bellamy.”

Clarke doesn’t need any more introduction than that. Half the time Bellamy seems like a looming threat in Octavia’s life, and the other half he seems like a guardian angle. She hasn’t gotten the full story of Octavia’s childhood but it is clear that the bond between the siblings has grown strong through an abundance of rough times. Clarke envies her a bit; the closest thing she ever had to a sibling was Wells, and that relationship crashed royally during their senior year.

“It’s a beautiful shot,” she comments, absently. The brother has dark hair like Octavia’s—from what she can see behind the obstructive palm—and it seems to be wildly curly. Octavia's features are unfocused but her bright smile is undeniable and it seems her eyes are scrunched in laughter.

Octavia scoffs. “It’s amazing how many photos that jerk has ruined. I swear, there can’t be more than five good photos of him in existence.”

 

\---  
**Canto Ostinato** [aka: Clarke is a girl, part 3]  
(February 2015)

“Well, you win, Bell,” Octavia says in lieu of a greeting as she storms into the apartment. “I’m officially more cultured.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Murphy comments from the couch. Bellamy opens his mouth to say-

“Shut up, John.” Octavia has always been skilled in beating him—and anyone—to the punch.

“Here are your keys back, Bellamy,” she tosses them at the table where they, impressively, land directly on his textbook. “And next time you lend me the truck, please don’t leave your lame CDs in.”

“Dissing my choice of music in no way verifies your improved so-called 'improved culture.'”

“Well, the fact that my passenger made me listen to, like, half of it does.”

Bellamy looks up from his reading for the first time since his sister entered, intrigued that one of Octavia’s friends would be interested in anything he might have left in the CD player.

“You know, I borrowed the truck because Clarke needed a ride and, like the gracious hostess you raised me to be, I gave her control of the radio. Do you know what happened when she turned it on, Bellamy?”

“I’m excited to hear, actually.”

“One of your ancient piano things starts playing and before I could finish apologizing she says she loves this piece! So I say, like, ‘okay, let’s listen to this for a while’. That CD never ends, Bellamy, what the hell?! And it’s the same thing over and over again just louder and softer.”

“He got you to listen to-”

“She,” Octavia corrects him. “Come on, Bell, you know about Clarke. She’s the one with the dragon girlfriend.”

“Oh, yeah, the princess. Still, I can’t believe she got you to listen to Canto Ostinato.”

“Apparently it’s one of the pieces she likes to play while painting. She said she painted a mural for a library back home while listening to it, which is no surprise considering it’s a song that lasts for a decade.”

“First of all, that piece isn’t even forty years old. Secondly, I’m proud that you’ve made at least one friend with some semblance of taste.”

“God, I hope not. If she starts mourning the library of Alexandria, I will have to cut her out of my life forever.”

 

 

\---

**Octavia's Desk part 2**

(April 2015)

Bellamy is not typically impressed by art that has been made since 1850. He prefers the classics, the works produced before photographs and film, that tell stories and portray true feeling. He feels like art has lost its core value now that there are so many other ways to capture and experience things visually. He hasn’t ever stepped into a modern art gallery willingly and his last experience with O put a permeant bad taste in his mouth for the whole ordeal. Back in high school he dated a girl who was really into art and he was constantly having to drop compliments about the little scribbles she would put on everything; when they finally broke it off he probably threw away an entire tree worth of paper with her drawings. It wasn’t like he didn’t appreciate it, but he hated having to find every little thing beautiful; after a while it was all just underwhelming.

But right now, he’s completely enthralled by a small charcoal drawing of his sister. It is small and the paper seems to have been graclessly torn out of something, but it’s almost a perfect replica of the photo directly above it. It looks so real he thinks he could just-

“Don’t you dare touch that!”

Bellamy nearly jumps out of his skin. “Jesus, O.”

“If you mess that up, I will really kill you.”

“I won’t! I was just looking. It’s… it’s incredible.”

Octavia stops shuffling through her drawers. “Pinch me. Did I really just hear you pay compliment to a drawing?”

Bellamy rolls his eyes and pushes away from the desk. “Where did it come from?”

“Clarke drew it. The really amazing part is that she wasn’t even looking at the photo. She just saw it a while back and said it was pretty, then I found that slipped under my door last night.”

“Clarke…she’s the one dating that ice queen from the art studio. Is she studying art, too?”

“She’s not with Lexa anymore, thank God. And, no, she’s pre-med. But I think she was going to do art originally… she took a gap year so she could afford art school without her mom’s help but ended up doing exactly what her mom wanted anyway.”

“The princess couldn’t make it on her own, huh?”

“It’s not like that, Bell, she’s had it rough,” Octavia says in a tone that is more protective than he expected.

“If _she_ had it rough then how did _we_ have it?”

Octavia huffs and slams the drawer shut. “Just because she had money doesn’t mean she had it easy.”

Bellamy backs off and makes a mental note not to make fun of Clarke as often. He looks back to the drawing and wonders how anyone can manage to capture an expression with just a few small strokes. He spares a fleeting thought to what a shame it is that this girl isn’t attempting a career in art.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest chapter I've written so far. I had more but decided to keep it for the conclusion. Sorry for the wait, I hope this is worth it!

 

\---

**Sharing a Bed**

(March 2015)

Bellamy is perfectly content to spend his Spring Break lounging around the empty campus and catching up on all the TV, naps, and pleasure reading this semester has stolen from him. Mid-March is too early and too cold to allow full enjoyment of the beach, so when Murphy proposed a week spent in coastal Carolina, Bellamy passed. He had enough of those experiences during his time as an undergraduate.

Back then he and Octavia were sharing an incredibly small apartment; there is very little she doesn't know about his excursions during that time, and even less that she won't hold over his head to get her way. So when she declares that she is doing the exact opposite as him for break, he doesn’t have the grounds to say no.

He isn’t too worried, though. The beach isn’t too far away, the house is owned by someone’s parents, and it’s only for three days. All he has to say against the trip is that it’s too damn cold for the beach. He doesn’t regret it, until-

“I’ll be in a room with Harper, Bree, and Clarke. There’s two twin beds and I don’t know how but Clarke and I are going to have to share one of the twin beds.”

“Clark?” He hasn’t been listening much, which she’s used to, and he hasn’t put down his book to respond in a decent amount of time, so Octavia is surprised by his sudden input.

“Yeah…”

“Look, O,” he says, begrudging the fact that he has to step back into big-brother mode, “this trip sounds safe enough, but there’s no way I’m letting you spend a weekend wrapped around some guy in a tiny bed.”

He is not prepared for the look of fury in her suddenly-way-too-close face.

“Listen to me Bellamy Blake, because I’m not going to say it again. After this I _will_ resort to physical reinforcement. _Clarke. Griffin. Is. A. Girl_.” She pokes him painfully in the chest with each word.

“Jesus, okay!”

“No, don't just 'Okay' me! I'm pissed! Clarke is my friend; if you can't even remember her gender then you clearly haven't been paying attention to a single thing I've said for a year. Clarke is the one with the amazing artistic talents that even you can appreciate, what _I_ consider to be a terrible taste in music but that _you_ would probably love, and who is going to be an amazing doctor. So, please, get it through your thick skull!”

Under the threat of violence, Bellamy never makes that mistake again.

 

\---

**Bones**

(May 2015)

Bellamy is spending an afternoon in his favorite study nook: an atrium that has tall windows for great lighting and minimal foot traffic. With finals next week, he doesn’t have anything to do but furiously pour over his notes and textbooks, and he knows the chances of getting it done are much higher here than at the apartment.

There is a girl sitting on the elongated window sill. Bellamy hasn't noticed her. She is drawing on her arm, trying to replicate skeletal diagrams from textbooks that are open in front of her. She uses her thumb to smudge out the mistakes but the whole thing has become mostly smudges, and she is growing continuously agitated, wishing she were ambidextrous and able to start clean on the other arm.

Bellamy, however, has not noticed any of this. He doesn’t even recognize her presence until she has already made up her mind to approach the only other blank canvas in the room.

She comes up to him and asks if he is using his non-dominant hand.

"Excuse me?" is the only response he can formulate.

"Do you need it for anything?"

He isn't too shocked; during his college college career Bellamy has been approach by many students with unusual survey questions.

"In general?"

She sighs. Her shoulders come up higher and she almost looks nervous, but she's determined.

"Look," she drops an open notebook on his table. The pages are covered in half finished, poorly proportioned sketches of labeled and mislabeled bones. (He doesn’t see the mirroring smudges on her own arm.) "I'm being tested on all the bones of the hand, wrist, and arm tomorrow and I just can't get it right."

"They're making you draw it?"

"No, this is just how I learn." She stares at him expectantly.

"I'm sorry, princess, but I'm can't read your mind. What the hell does your problem have to do with _my_ _arm_?" He is becoming increasingly worried that this girl might ask to dissect him.

"If you aren't using it, I was hoping I could draw on it, just trace out and label things. It'll give me a better sense of where everything really is. I can flip the pages for you," she offers, gesturing at his open textbook.

Bellamy wouldn't say that he agreed against his better judgement, because he's not sure he used any judgement at all. He was just so baffled by how incredibly random and specific the request was while also captivated by the way her fiercely blue eyes managed to convey her sincerity over it that his lips formed an assent without his bidding.

So he watches as the sketches become more elaborate and his arm is transformed, wondering how this stranger completely looses herself in it. After a while his book and stellar concentration fail in comparison. He is as completely absorbed in watching her as she practices.

There's a line between her eyebrows that he finds endearing, and his gaze drops a few times to the lip that's being bitten. She thinks out loud, too, speaking the names of what she's drawing as she goes. Her fingers are soft and all over his hand and arm, and he's never been this affected by what is essentially no more intimate than hand holding.

And that scares him a little. So he never asks her name, never gives her his. By the time she's done she seems to be in such a concentrated state that there isn't much left to say but, "Good luck on your test."

(The girl breathes out shakily when he’s gone. She hadn’t missed the way his skin warmed where she touched him, or the way his eyes had followed her, or that he had stopped flipping pages entirely at some point. She wasn’t unaffected, either; there is a shaky stretch of marker above his ulna that looks more like a heartbeat diagram that a bone. But Lexa is still too fresh and she wants nothing to do with any kind of feelings. She’s more likely to let Finn fuck her again than get into another relationship right now.)

Bellamy's arm stays like that for three days, and he seriously contemplates the pros and cons of making it permanent.

\---

**Dr. Princess**

(July 2015)

It’s been two whole months (more than that but Clarke doesn’t want to admit it) since summer began and she hasn’t seen a single person from school. She spends most of her days working at the art gallery and her nights bartending (she isn’t very good but the occupation drives her mother crazy so she keeps at it). However, she’s planning a hiking trip with some coworkers from the gallery and keeps in touch with school friends, especially Octavia, so she doesn’t feel like a loser too often. But tonight she doesn’t have a shift at the bar and her email is full of reminders that there is only one month left until the next semester begins and she’s realizing just how long it has been since she saw everyone.

Usually she sends a warning text before calling, but now she taps Octavia’s contact and makes the call, unannounced. She’s chewing on her nail, afraid no one will answer, when the third ring is cut off. The voice on the other side isn’t the one Clarke expected, but the words spoken are what surprise her.

“Hey there, Dr. Princess.” It’s a male voice, and Clarke wonders if she had interrupted a date.

“Um, hi… who is this?”

The voice chuckles. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Through the confusion, the realization that she is speaking to Octavia’s famed brother slowly dawns on Clarke.

“Bellamy,” she says. It’s not a question; for whatever reason she doesn’t need to ask.

“You got it,” he says laughingly from the other side of the call. “And I’ll bet you’re Clarke.”

Clarke can feel her cheeks heating for reasons beyond her. She’s half curious and half terrified about what kind of reputation this stranger might have of her, built only on stories from Octavia.

“What gave me away?”

“Well the contact in Octavia's phone said Dr. Princess, and you’re the only person I know of that Octavia calls ‘princess’. Plus the contact picture is Clark Kent.”

Clarke is slightly worried about the fact that she has gained such a reputation, and is almost let down that he doesn't think more of her. But why should he? Her own imagination has churned up all these ideas about Octavia's mysterious older brother over the past year, but that doesn't translate to the real world. In fact this is the first time they have spoken directly. Yet despite the unfamiliarity, she is comfortable talking to him already. There is something warm in the deep pitch of his voice that she would like to keep hearing.

“So, we’ve never actually met, let me introduce myself. I’m Bellamy, Octavia’s brother.”

“Oh, you aren’t exactly a stranger.”

“Well, I’m sure your opinion of me is pretty low, considering the stories Octavia likes to tell.”

“No actually!” Clarke freezes, embarrassed by the quick response.

She can hear curiosity in the silence and she isn’t sure what she’ll say next. Inexplicably, Clarke finds herself on the back patio. When did she leave her room? She has always walked around while on the phone but she is usually at least aware of her movements.

“Well, I mean,” she walks the line between the brick and pool’s edge tediously, placing the heels of one step against the toes of the last. “I know that I like your music, for one.”

There is more silence and she’s dipping her toes in the water. It’s a shame she hasn’t spent more time in the pool this year. Normally Wells would come by and drag her in a few times a week, but now…

“That’s not something I get a lot, actually.” The return of the voice jolts her back to the present. “I like your art.”

This surprises her.

“I'm not sure I believe that. Octavia has definitely called you an art snob,” Clarke says.

He laughs, and she likes the sound of it. It’s deep and warm, and sounds almost timid.

“Well, I am, actually, but I like yours.”

She wants to say thank you but her throat is suddenly tight.

There’s a beeping and a crash suddenly from his end. He shouts a curse and asks for a second. In that time, she hears what sounds like kitchen utensils being shuffled and a timer going off. She realizes that they’ve been talking for a few minutes and she doesn’t know what she interrupted him from; even stranger is that she hasn’t thought to ask for Octavia yet.

“Sorry about that,” he apologizes, returning to the phone.

“No, it’s fine, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. But, um, if I am distracting you from something I can let you go.”

She’s sitting upright and cross-legged in a reclined chair now, surprisingly reluctant to do what she just suggested.

“I was cooking dinner but it doesn’t require much maintenance. Just a stir every few minutes.”

“Octavia loves your cooking, raves about it all the time. But don’t tell her I told you that.”

“Sure, Princess. What else do you know about me?”

“You don’t like taking pictures.” He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t say anything, just keeps listening, so Clarke continues. “I drew Octavia once from a photo that you were in but you… you were hiding.”

“I saw that drawing, actually, it was nice. No, I’m not a fan of photos and this whole selfie revolution is really giving me a headache, something O takes full advantage of. Oh, speak of the devil!”

Clarke hears what is undeniably Octavia’s voice and what can only be some kind of violent interaction between the siblings.

“No worries, I’ve been a perfectly good phone-host,” Bellamy’s voice says, though it’s muffled and farther away.

“Clarke!” The joy at hearing her friend’s greeting is surprisingly sharp. During the second semester, Clarke had hardly gone a day without seeing Octavia—typically while taking temporary residence in her room—and now it had been a week since they had even spoken. “I’m sorry, my _jerk brother_ didn’t tell me you called. Geeze it’s been... this call has lasted thirteen minutes! Brother, why didn’t you come get me? Oh, that smells good! Come get me when it’s ready!”

The noises of the kitchen fade and Octavia begins chattering away. Clarke’s feet carry her into the house again. They don’t end the call for hours, continuing through dinner—apparently to Bellamy’s chagrin—and three episodes of _Scrubs_.

  

\---

**Clarke Sees Bellamy**

(September 2015)

Clarke has always had a great ability to remember faces. She thinks it’s because she likes to draw them so much so her brain just notices features, or maybe she’s got it backwards and she likes drawing them because they stick out. Either way, she never forgets a face. The problem with this trait is that people don’t always remember her, which has caused many uncomfortable situations in her lifetime. To combat this issue, she usually doesn’t instigate conversation with people she recognizes, giving them the chance to approach her first.

It happens a lot around campus. Sometimes it’s really great, like with Giles the janitor from her dorm. She always recognized him around campus and said hello, so now he knows who she is and lets her borrow a vacuum whenever she wants. But sometimes she just feels like a stalker when she recognizes someone she doesn’t really know.

The biggest issue recently has been the guy she drew on during finals last semester. She remembers it clearly, the way he’d watched her and her stomach had squeezed, so of course she recognizes his face around campus.

The part that makes her uncomfortable is that, from recognizing him enough times, she has put together some information on his identity. She’s pretty sure he is a graduate student, since she has seen him coming and going from the graduate center multiple times. She noticed once that he was wearing a green and blue checked shirt, and that he wore it again only the next week when she saw him at the library, and wondered if it was the same one or if he just liked those colors. One time he was a few people ahead of her in line for coffee and she had been anxious to see whether he would see and recognize her when he turned around. He didn’t, and when she passed his table later he was too absorbed in a book for either to happen.

Clarke isn’t disappointed, really, just annoyed with the situation. She wishes she could just delete the files in her brain that keep documenting him.

That being impossible, she begins to build a story for him in passing. He looks like the type that would openly have a relationship with a professor. He’s definitely a coffee snob, since she has seen him walk right by Starbucks to get to a local shop and because he wears plaid. Since the time she drew on his arm last semester, she has only seen him with a scowl on his face, which makes her wonder if his attitude is typically bad and she happened to catch him at a good time.

 

 ---

**Bellamy Sees Clarke**

(October 2015)

Bellamy wonders when it last was that he actually allowed himself to have feelings for a person. Is he even open to the idea of a relationship? Is he capable of committing on a serious level?

As he hops around the dimmed room, hobbled by the foot that’s caught halfway through a pant leg and unable to locate his shirt, he wonders why the hell these thoughts are coming to him now. He’s checking his hair in the mirror to make sure it doesn’t look too much like he just had sex, about to bolt while the girl is in the shower, while at the same time contemplating the possibility of a relationship in the future. It’s fucked up and he has no idea why it’s happening.

(That’s not true. He knows what spurred them; he’s just too scared to admit it.

It was seeing that girl again. Bellamy saw her once earlier in the semester, ordering a latte at Sky Brews. He recognized her then, too, but passed her off as one of the students from the class he assisted and ignored the nagging feeling saying he was wrong. But seeing her that morning caused a quick remembrance.

She was sitting at a table outside the same café, wrapped in an orange knit sweater, studying her laptop with the same expression she had once fixed steadily on his arm. He recognized the wrinkle between her eyebrows and found himself wondering what was causing it in that moment. Bellamy wanted all at once to go smooth it out and to be the reason it grew deeper. She was worrying her lip and strands of blonde hair were escaping all ties and tangling around her wind-nipped face.

His fingers had tingled at his sides and he’d blamed it on the cold rather than an urge to push those strands out of her face. He refused to remember the feeling of that same urge during their last interaction.)

The sky is pale grey when Bellamy reaches the truck where it’s parked (terribly) on the curb. Poorly dressed, he hops in and drives away. In a matter of minutes, he finds himself outside the café from yesterday. It won’t even open for another forty-five minutes. An absurd feeling of disappointment settles into his stomach at the emptiness of the place, specifically the umbrella-covered tables outside.

Did he actually believe he would see her? The place isn’t even open and no one sane is awake at 6:15 in a college town. And if she had been there what was he expecting? That this girl he had only interacted with once was going to help him sort out his fear of relationships?

Bellamy decides waiting around is a bad idea. A run might be better for him than coffee this morning, anyway.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

 

**Those Stupid Freckles**

(October 2015)

The sketches featuring the stranger come without Clarke realizing she’s doing it. She likes to sketch facial features and his are just in her head, and that keeps translating itself to paper. She doesn’t even realize how often she’s drawn him specifically until she finds a receipt, a gum wrapper, and a sticky note all featuring him in the bottom of her bag; there are other sketches littering her space too, but the stranger seems more represented than anything else, surprising since Clarke’s idle pen has always been an equal opportunity employer.

Octavia snatches a paper from Clarke’s desk. “You’ve met my brother?”

“Bellamy?” Clarke blinks for a moment, realizing she hasn’t. “We talked on the phone once but, huh, I guess I haven’t actually met him.”

“Good for you, he’s an ass. This kind of looks like him though.” Octavia holds up the printout from Clarke’s evolutionary biology course, where black ballpoint pen depicts a freckled nose and dark eyes beside a particularly boring graph. “He’s got those stupid freckles,” Octavia adds, passing a hand lazily across the area of her own face where such ornamentation would be.

Clarke shrugs, turning back to the calculations on her laptop. She’s been stuck on this question for almost twenty minutes with no progress.

“It’s weird that you haven’t met him yet,” Octavia continues. Clarke knows she’ll chase any lead for conversation to procrastinate writing that paper.

“I don’t even know what he looks like, come to think of it. How come you don’t post any pictures of him?”

The other girl returns to her own desk, which is set up to be more of a cosmetics station than anything else. “He doesn’t like having his photo taken at all. The only recent ones I have I had to be sneaky about. But even then he doesn’t want them posted anywhere. He used to have a Facebook but deleted it after a while, and doesn’t have any social media. Well he had a blog for a while, but I think that was a school thing.”

Clarke snorts. “Sometimes I forget your brother is crazy.”

“Well, his is, but this actually makes sense. He had one of those crazy employers that they warn you about in high school that use what you post on the internet against you. He was working a security job a while back, and then they fired him out of the blue and used all kinds of private things from his accounts as reason to not pay unemployment fees.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. His life has kind of been an assortment of shit shows like that. But seriously,” she picks up the sketch again, “this looks like him.”

“Write your damn paper, Octavia.”

 

\---

**Football**

(October 2015)

He nearly chokes on his bear when he sees her.

Until now, Bellamy has been absolutely hating the whole experience. Every weekend he’s gotten an earful from every stranger on the street about how he is missing out on “college’s greatest experience”. He didn’t really care; the sport has never appealed to him. But the professor he works for decided to leave town this weekend and offered Bellamy his tickets, and Bellamy rarely turns away anything comes free.

So now he is spending his Saturday morning surrounded by drunk undergraduates who are decked out in school colors and seem to be searching for their maximum volume. Kick off was at noon and he wonders if they all really started tailgating at nine in the morning.

Sure, the seats are amazing, but he has no clue what’s going on and all the food is over priced. His only break is that his two roommates – actual fans of the sport – duked it out over the second ticket, and Miller’s offer to buy all the booze for the day won out.

“Hey man, loosen up,” Miller says, pressing another beer into his hand.

Bellamy takes it gladly. It’s then, when he’s in the middle of a swig, that he sees her.

The last time was weeks ago, and he’d tried not to think about it since. Then, she was sitting, somber, absorbed in a book and drawing no attention except Bellamy’s.

Now she’s on the jumbotron where 60,000 people can see her. And she’s radiant. Her smile is huge and genuine as she cheers for the camera, and her eyes are glowing against the royal blue of her spirit wear. She’s wearing an overly large jersey with tiny shorts and he can see her legs going on for miles. Nathan isn’t the only one who hoots at the grinning girl on the screen, and Bellamy doesn’t even try to understand the possessive pang in his chest.

He finishes his beer and sends Miller for another round.

 

 

\---

**Wink**

(October 2015)

Late, late, late. Again. Late and thoroughly pissed off. This is not the bus she should be on. _Her_ bus left just as she was running towards the stop, and this one lets off five minutes further away from her building. It’s her own fault for thinking she had time between classes to go get Starbucks, and for lingering too long in order to send snapchats of the hot barista to Octavia, but she’s still pissed.

The busses are always over-crowded this time of day. She’s fumbling to return her student ID to her bag as she steps onto the rumbling public transit vehicle, attempting to not spill her drink or drop her phone, and she’s _so late._

The aisle of the bus is full of people who will probably get off in the next two stops, then she can claim a seat. For now, she has to stand, balancing herself and all her stuff near the entrance. The bus jolts forward and she looks up in surprise –

Directly at _him_.

And she doesn’t just _see_ him; she makes eye contact. They must have looked up at just the right time and now they’ve made eye contact for too long to pretend they haven’t.

It’s cut off in a moment by riders moving towards the exit. When the crowd lingers between him and Clarke, she’s both disappointed and relieved. She doesn’t know what she would do if a situation forced her to interact with him. What would she say?

 _“Hi, I drew on you once and I’ve been low-key obsessed with your face since then,”_ is not a good conversation starter.

The bus stops and the crowd begins to file out. Despite rationality, Clarke finds herself looking for him.

When her eyes do find him again, he’s part of the group that is exiting the bus, and he’s looking right back at her.

He winks.

And then he’s gone. There are plenty of seats now but Clarke isn’t moving, too shocked over what just happened. Did he wink because he recognized her, or because she was staring? Was he looking at someone else the whole time? Why are there butterflies going off in her stomach?

Damn, she needs to get laid. If a wink from a stranger can get her all middle-school-girl-with-a-crush, then it’s been way too long.

Helpless, Clarke is filled by a giddy warmth every time she remembers that moment for the rest of the day.

 

 

\---

**The Hangover**

(October 2015)

Clarke does _not_ have a low tolerance. She can handle her drinks well enough and even sober up quickly if she needs to, but it’s the hangovers that really kill her. That’s what a preference for tequila bourbon gets her.

So far, the half second that her eyes have opened was enough reminder of the price her body pays for that not-too-low tolerance.

She and Octavia never bothered buying real window treatments for their room, and the light that’s peeking through the decade-old blinds is delivering a stabbing assault to her eyes. It’s quiet though, except for the ringing in her head. Octavia is still asleep beside her, curled into a ball and wearing last night’s dress. It seems that they both passed out on the lower bunk. Clarke remembers the walk back to campus with the group of friends that slowly dissipated and the elevator ride up, but she must have been ninety percent asleep by the time they actually reached the room.

She considers moving to the fridge – very slowly, probably crawling – to get water, when a phone sounds. It's directly beside her ear and Clarke thinks a car accident would be less painful at this point. She grabs it and answers just to stop the noise.

“Hello?”

Hesitation on the other end.

“Excuse me, who the hell are you and why are you calling at 9 a.m. on a Saturday?!”

“This is Bellamy,” comes the voice finally. “Can I talk to Octavia?”

“Um,” Clarke glances at her friend who only recently stopped drooling onto a pillow. “Not at the moment.”

“Where is she?”

Clarke may not be in the best state of mind but she knows better than to tell him the truth.

“She just went for a run; she should be back to the dorm in thirty minutes or so.” She's kicking Octavia’s leg as she says it, already planning a record-breaking shower and dress routine. Octavia groans; Clarke rejoices the flicker of life.

“Bullshit, Octavia hates running.”

“How did you even get my number?”

“This is Octavia’s phone, Princess,” the voice says. It almost sounds like he’s teasing her, but she can’t really make sense of anything at the moment.

“Oh yeah, whoops,” Clarke sputters, trying to cover her tracks. “She left it here.”

“Well I'm going to show up outside of that dorm in thirty minutes. She really needs to be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“She knows, just remind her.”

“She'll need time to shower!”

“Then I guess it's up to you to light a fire under her ass.” The call ends as quickly as it started and the relief that floods through Clarke at the end of the noise is intense.

“Octavia, your brother is going to be here in half an hour. Rise and shine.”

What proceeds is absolute chaos, but in twenty-eight minutes flat Clarke sends her friend out the door with a second cup of coffee and two aspirin in hand. Those twenty-eight minutes are the last she spends out of bed for the rest of the day.

 

 

\---

**Breaking and Entering**

(November 2015)

“Did you know you can print to a recognized wireless printer from miles away?”

Octavia’s question probably wouldn’t make sense even if Clarke’s phone wasn’t about to fall from her shoulder and wasn’t being drowned out by the bus’s rumbling.

“What?”

“I printed my report to the library printer this morning so I could pick it up between classes, but apparently it printed to the one in Bellamy’s apartment instead. I didn’t even know that was possible!”

“That’s… fascinating. Look, O, my hands are kind of full right now and I’m having trouble-”

“I need you to get it for me! You just got off work, right? So you’re nearby! Plus, we have classes really close to each other later so I can just come grab it when you get here.”

“You need me to… get it? How?”

“I need you to break into Bellamy’s apartment and get my report off the printer. I’ve called him six times and he hasn’t answered.”

“Well it’s 10 in the morning. Didn’t he close last night?”

“See? You know his schedule, you’re practically family. _Please_ , Clarke? I’ll buy your coffee all week!”

“I’ve never even met him, I can’t just-”

“Yeah you can! His roommate always leaves the door open when he goes to classes. You can just walk right in. The printer is under the TV. I just texted you his address. Thanks, Clarke, you’re amazing!”

The call ends and Clarke’s phone beeps with a received message. She hasn’t even taken off her lab coat yet. But she’s pretty sure Octavia said please at least once during that phone call, which never happens; plus, when Clarke was puking in a public restroom over the weekend Octavia stuck around to hold back her hair, so she was due a favor.

So eight minutes later Clarke gets off the bus in front of an apartment complex she’s only vaguely familiar with. She recognizes the Blake’s truck where it is parked and texts Octavia that he’s probably home.

_Octavia Blake, 10:09:43: Just go in hes probably sleeping. Ill call him again but hes a bitch so_

The door is unlocked, as predicted. Clarke sneaks in, measuring every step carefully until she reaches the printer. _The Life and Times of Julius Caesar_ is the title of the report, which strikes Clarke as funny since Octavia swears against all things classical to annoy her brother, who is apparently addicted.

A phone starts vibrating on the coffee table behind her, which she assumes is Bellamy’s. Sure enough, Octavia’s face and the name “O” appear on the screen, so she answers it.

“Hey it’s me. I got it.”

“Thank God, you’re my hero. So I guess my idiot brother doesn’t have his phone on him?”

“Well I see his phone and his car, but no brother. I’m just going to leave now.”

“Okay, I’ll see you later.”

“Bye.”

Clarke has almost made it out when the door next to her swings open suddenly. A girl freezes in the doorway at seeing Clarke, who feels a curse slip out on her next breath.

“Who are you?”

“I’m uh…” Clarke’s not really sure what to say. The girl, with lazily arranged clothes and sex hair, is waiting for a response. “I’m just leaving.”

“Okay, ‘just leaving’, should I tell him you stopped by?”

The girl moves her head slightly to gesture to the “him” in question, and for the first time Clarke looks past her into the room. There’s a guy face-down on the bed, tangled in sheets and not much else, from what Clarke can see. Though he is probably Octavia’s brother, she can’t be sure that it’s not one of the roommates. The only identifying features she can really make out are a head of dark curls and a partially exposed but clearly spectacular ass.

Her face is blazing and she can feel the words jumbling before she even opens her mouth to speak them.

“No, uh, I think he’ll know I was here. He missed a few calls. I’m friends with his sister…And I’m leaving. It was nice to meet you- or, um, see you. Um, Bye.”

There is a bus stop at the end of the building, but she goes to the one that’s three blocks away instead.

 _Dr. Princess, 10:14:56:_ _You owe me SO MUCH coffee._

 _Octavia Blake, 10:15:13:_ _youre the best ilysm_

_10:15:28:_ _Ill be at your noon class to get it_

 

 

\---

**Bail**

(November 2015)

            “I’m giving you Bellamy’s number,” Octavia announces, already unlocking Clarke’s phone to do so.

“Okay why?”

“So if you ever need to be bailed out of jail you call him, or if I have an emergency or something. It just seems like a good idea.”

“You know I don’t know him, right?”

“Yeah, but you’ve talked before, right? On the phone? He liked you.”

Clarke feels her face heat up, remembering how they managed to talk about nothing for so long but not get bored.

“That doesn’t mean he’ll bail me out of jail,” she argues.

“Yeah it does. He doesn’t like most people but he liked you. Plus you’re my friend, so you’re family. It’s law. Text him now so he knows who you are.”

 _Me, 12:07:14:_ _Hi_

_12:07:38: T_ _his is Clarke, Octavia’s roommate_

 _Bellamy Blake_ _, 12:11:56:_ _Hi Clarke, I know who you are. Why do you have my number_

 _Me, 12:12:14:_ _Octavia said you will bail me out of jail_

 _Bellamy Blake_ _, 12:11:30:_ _Shit what happened?!_

“Oh, shit, Octavia, your brother thinks we’re in jail now.”

“Dammit.”

Octavia calls her brother and straightens things out. So far, Clarke and Bellamy’s texting success rate is 0-1. Not a great outlook.

 

 

\---

**On Again…**

(November 2015)

Bellamy is grading papers on the couch when Octavia barges in.

“I need to stay here for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“Until Clarke comes back to her senses. God, she’s so stupid I can’t even look at her.”

“So you’re staying here…because you’re fighting with the princess? You two are always fighting; why is this so special?”

Bellamy circles an answer on student 904735324’s sheet that is spelled so wrong even he can’t identify it.

“Because she’s relapsed.”

This causes him to drop the papers entirely.

“Octavia, if your roommate is doing drugs you need to-”

“Geeze, Bellamy, why are you so damn thick? Have I ever once, in the year that I’ve known this girl, _ever_ mentioned drugs? No! What’s the one thing Clarke has issues with?”

His brain is still trying to make the transition from grading to reality. For an hour he’s had ancient Mediterranean history on the mind and getting back into the present will take more time. However, he’s not unfamiliar with the history of his sister’s new roommate.

“Relationships issues again?”

“Gold star,” his sister grumbles as she collapses into the bungee chair. “She got back with Lexa.”

“The ice queen from the art thing?”

“The one and only.” She pilfers his bag of mini donuts. “I just don’t get it, she’s so much better than this. Beautiful, talented, future doctor…in fact, I’d throw you at her if you smelled a bit better.”

He steals the donut from her fingers. She elbows him in the stomach so he chokes on it.

“Just kidding. I wouldn’t let you near Clarke even if you did smell better. Even though she does think your ass is cute.”

He hasn’t fully retrieved his breath from the donut incident, but this sends him into another coughing fit.

“When would she have seen _that_?”

“When she came over to get my essay. I guess your girl didn’t think it necessary to cover you up when she left the door open. By the way, that can’t happen while I’m here. I’d 100% have to burn the entire place down.”

“Sorry, that’s a deal breaker. You can’t stay here.”

“Gross.”

 

 

\---

**New Girl**

(November 2015)

Bellamy is making a pb&j when John Murphy swings onto the counter.

“You know, Blake, I would usually have tried to kick your sister to the curb by now,” his roommate shares, “but that chick she keeps bringing around his fucking _hot_.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says.

“So when are you going to tell your little sister you screwed her new friend?”

Bellamy points the peanut-buttered spreading knife (that is actually a steak knife because he doesn't see the point in owning a knife that can't cut things) at the other man’s throat. “If you say a word to her, John, I swear to God-”

“Damn, okay, chill.” He leaves the kitchen, sulking.

It’s not exactly the first time he’s slept with one of Octavia’s friends, but until this point they were just people he and she both happened to know. This is different. Raven is someone Octavia specifically introduced him to as her friend. So it is a first, in a way, and he is not excited about the prospects of O finding out.

She’s about to transfer in for her junior year, starting in January, and is in town apartment hunting. Octavia, who is still crashing at Bellamy’s place, has been bringing her around often.

So it wasn’t his fault when she was there and they were both drunk and Octavia disappeared.

It’s not guilt that causes him to keep his mouth shut but genuine fear for his life.

“But those other two,” Murphy begins again, reemerging in the kitchen. “Those two nerds that came over, damn, I have never actually wanted to strangle someone like that before. What were there names?”

“Jasper and Monty, and if you don’t shut the fuck up, Murphy, I’ll run you over with Bellamy’s truck.” Octavia seems to have returned as well.

“Damn, you Blakes don’t fuck around with threats.”

He exits again, and this time Bellamy hears the front door shut.

“And you,” Octavia says, turning on him suddenly. “You really didn’t think I knew? Damn, you don’t know me at all.”

Bellamy is still somewhat disoriented by the shift of her focus, but he knows enough to attempt an apology.

“Just don’t do it again, geeze. I have few enough friends as it is, I don’t need you to go around breaking their hearts.”

“Hearts weren’t exactly in play that night, we were more concerned with things, like-”

“ _Stop!_ Holy shit!” Octavia races for the door. “A truck can run over two people at once, you know!”

 

 

\---

**…Off Again**

(December 2015)

Clarke was never one to have many close friends. It makes sense that she has deeply-rooted trust issues, given the shit show that was her parents’ marriage and divorce, but she could never make sense of why those issues emerged every time she got close to someone. For most of her life it was just her and Wells, and even that fell through eventually.

Then came Octavia, who wasn’t phased by Clarke’s tendency to distance herself when things got tough or personal. She’s always honest with Clarke, and always there for support. She doesn’t take no for an answer, which Clarke hates but needs in her life.

So when Clarke called her the night Lexa broke things off again (to put heartache in the simplest terms possible), Octavia was back in their room in no time with Ben and Jerry’s, an “I told you so”, and Raven.

So now Clarke has two real friends.

Raven is amazing. In the two weeks since then, she and Clarke have gotten close. They took no time to break through the ice of the “Finncident”, and with that common ground to stand on they found that they could get along well.

Apparently, Raven had tracked down all of Finn’s friends from his first two semesters in an attempt to reach out to the other girl he’d hurt, but she’d found Octavia first. Octavia adopted her immediately, because that’s what Octavia does.

Tonight they’re staying in and marathoning Netflix in the room that Raven has started subletting near campus. They are already three episodes into Jane the Virgin.

“You know, ‘tavia, Michael really reminds me of your brother,” Raven says, addressing her friend without taking eyes off the screen. “Like, he’s crazy over-protective and has his expectations way too high, but he really just loves her so much and will do anything for her. That’s basically Bellamy, right?”

“I’ll only agree to that because I can’t stand Michael,” replies Octavia. “Team Raf, all the way.”

“Whatever. Plus, they both have super pouty lips.”

“ _You_ are never allowed to talk about my brother’s lips in front of me.”

Clarke is still playing catch up.

“Wait,” she interrupts, “you’ve met Bellamy?”

Octavia snorts, her retort stalled by a mouthful of popcorn.

“Had to. Octavia was practically living with him when I showed up. Why, have you not?”

They haven’t talked much about the time Octavia spent away while Clarke was “making bad decisions,” as her friend put it.

“Raven’s done more that _meet_ Bellamy,” Octavia says, finally overcoming her buttery muffler.

The meaning behind Octavia’s comment is absolutely clear, but it’s so out of place that Clarke takes a few moments to process it.

“You slept with Bellamy?” She’s aware that her voice is too loud, and that it’s really high pitched, and that she sounds too invested, but she doesn’t care.

“Why not? I didn’t know if Octavia and I were going to be close. And he’s hot!”

“Clarke wouldn’t know,” Octavia jeers, throwing popcorn at Clarke’s face. “All she knows is that he has a cute butt, apparently.” Clarke retaliates with her own popcorn. “Which I never needed to think about, by the way. I swear, between the two of you I’ve got way more of an image of my brother than I _ever_ wanted.”

“Shhhh,” Raven commands. “No body speaks over Abuela.”

Clarke can’t turn her attention back to the show. Her mind is reeling. Why should she care that Raven slept with Bellamy? Why did her stomach clench when she learned they had met?

Clarke doesn’t know Bellamy but… she does. They text semi-often, and they’ve even had a couple phone conversations. He texted her once when Octavia wasn’t talking to her and just said _“She’s mad at you but she misses you”_ and Clarke had cried.

When Octavia gave her a birthday card last week, he had even signed it, “Happy Birthday, Princess –Bellamy.” It was almost like an inside joke, which can’t be had between strangers.

It takes another episode and a half for Clarke to get her mind away from that topic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All that's left is the ending and it's almost done. I hope you enjoyed this chapter! (Let me know if you did!)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I knew it would happen eventually. For over a year I have wanted to give this story the ending it deserved. I hope you like it as much as I do. Thanks for those who have stuck around!  
> Chapter wc: 4,204

**New Year**

(January 2016)

In the moments after midnight, when the shouting and confetti have subsided, Bellamy sends three texts.

_**Me** , 12:03:22_

_Merry Christmas, brat_

_**O,** 12:04:01_

_happy easter nerd_

He smiles at his phone and hopes she’s safe, wherever the hell she is. This time of year he always remembers where they started, how bad some years were, and he’s so grateful for how things have turned out.

The next he sends to his roomates’ group chat.

_**Me** , 12:05:42_

_Happy New Year, don’t forget to pay rent today._

_**John Murphy** , 12:07:11_

_Fuck off man, it ain’t mornin yet_

_12:07:39_

_take shots, give some girl head, have a good time_

_happy goddamn new year!_

_**Nathan Miller** , 12:15:54_

_Happy New Year’s, Bellamy. Murphy, take a fucking nap._

Bellamy’s fingers type out the message before he has even thought to process whether or not it’s strange that she is one of the few people in the world he cared enough about to contact right now. Fireworks sparkle in the sky and everyone starts bustling out of the bar into the streets, where a second round of toasts seems to have started.

_**Me** , 12:16:47_

_Happy New Year, Princess. I’m glad my crazy sister dragged you into our lives._

_**the princess** , 12:17:09_

_Cheers to a new year, Bellamy Blake!_

_12:21:11_

_Maybe this will be the year I finally meet you ;)_

\--

Hours away, Clarke giggles over a glass of champagne. She strong-armed Raven into joining her for New Year’s Eve. Clarke hates attending these events with all these people from her at-home circle, but the booze is always high in quality and quantity so it hasn’t been all bad.

Raven, who had kissed her at midnight before turning to do the same to a guy across the table, gives her a look.

“You’re giggling, and _blushing_. What’s going on.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“I’ve got a _crush_ ,” Clarke shout-whines. “On a guy I haven’t even _met!_ ”

“OMG, did you get Tinder finally? Clarke, you aren’t supposed to crush on Tinder guys, you’re supposed to fuck them.”

Clarke giggles again, louder. She feels stupid on multiple levels. “Can you promise to keep a sh—a sheek—a _secret_?”

“Better than you could right now, I bet,” Raven swears, leaning in closer.

“I like Bellamy, I haven’t ‘met’ him, technically, but I text him all the time. He’s…he’s really funny, Ray, and he texts me a lot too like he actually wants to talk to me. God, I’m so stupid.”

Raven takes the information in stride. She steels a bottle of champagne from the next table over and refills their glasses.

“Raise a glass,” she says boisterously, not worried about volume in a place like this, “to having a _stupid_ New Year!”

Clarke and at least three strangers cheer and drink.

 

 

\---

**Little Things**

(January 2016)

Clarke has been away from school for a month. She isn’t surprised at missing it, considering last summer’s separation anxiety, but she is surprised by all the little things that affect her.

On Wednesdays she misses waiting at the cafeteria doors for 7 a.m. to finally happen, _blueberry waffle day_ ringing in her ears.

When she’s trying to choose an outfit, she misses Raven’s brutal honesty.

She misses Monty and Jasper’s mixed drinks that are sometimes vomit-worthy, sometimes amazing, and always supernaturally strong.

She misses walking around campus wrapped in three sweaters but still freezing her ass off. She misses sore feet at the end of the day and having a reason to curl up and sleep early. She even misses the small, annoying things like having to avoid Ark Hall and the dedication to “our generous donors, Drs. Jacob and Abigail Griffin,” and the semi-regular threats from Octavia’s brother.

When she’s walking downtown Christmas shopping she sees a guy with dark hair, wearing plaid, and she misses seeing her tall, freckled stranger around campus. There’s nothing to miss, really, but she misses the feeling she gets when she sees him around.

 

 

\---

**Goddamn Cinderella**

(January 2016)

Two weeks into the rushing process, Octavia decided the sorority life just wasn’t for her. Being Octavia, though, she still managed to make enough friends in those two weeks to get invited on a new year’s cruise months later. Clarke grew up in a world where wealthy friends’ wealthy families would take her on vacations and pay for everything, but this was a first for Octavia; Clarke thought her friend might explode when she first got the invite. (“No _way!_ No _freaking_ way!”) Her excitement was infectious, but now that Clarke is back on campus she is less than excited that her roommate is still tanning on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean.

Raven is gone too, stuck with family – and, by translation, Finn’s family – until the last day of break. In fact, Monty is the only one in town the day Clarke gets back. Since they both have painful remnants of family holidays and no roommates for entertainment, they decide to go out.

“Going out” according to Monty begins with multiple shots of his family’s holiday blend moonshine, which reeks of cinnamon, citrus, and liver failure. Clarke takes two. (Well she _took_ three, but the first ended up on the floor, which visibly vexed Monty.)

“Where are we going anyway?” Clarke asks as they start the walk towards downtown. “You can’t get in anywhere, you’re a baby!”

“Shut up, you turned 21 like a day ago. Plus, I’m normal for our grade, you’re the one on the _decelerated_ learning track.”

“A gap year does not count as ‘ _decelerated’_ ,” Clarke grumbles, throwing aggressive air quotes in his face. “And making fun of me won’t make it easier for your fake to pass security.”

“We’re going to Grounders. They’re having all-night happy hour to welcome back grad students. Plus, I, uh, know a guy who works there…so I can get in.”

“ _Know a guy_?” Clarke swings around to face him, walking backward. He glances apologetically at a passerby that she almost knocked over. “What are you hiding?”

“Nothing!” He’s avoiding her gaze by pretending to admire the left-over Christmas greenery that’s winding up a nearby lamp post, and two-shots-in Clarke is not fooled by such an act.

“Monty, you tell me now or I’ll set Octavia on you, and she always gets answers when she wants them.”

“No! I’ll tell you, just don’t let Octavia know. His name is Nathan and he’s one of her brother’s roommates.”

“Octavia’s brother?” Clarke is so thrown by the unexpected connection that she stops in her tracks. Monty pulls her back into motion by the wrist. “Bellamy?”

Clarke has cinnamon on her tongue and moonshine in her head, but saying his name always makes her happy. It’s such a great name, I love that name, she thinks.

“Yeah, I met Nathan when Octavia was over there all the time. I don’t think her brother liked me, so I didn’t go over more than twice but, I don’t know, Nathan just… liked me too? We’ve been talking. I don’t know what it is, and he probably has six more people like me, but he’s going to let me in tonight, so that’s something.”

“Good enough for me,” Clarke says, messing with the long sleeves of her too-tight romper when Monty stops leading her by the wrist. It is an item that exposes more of her chest than she’s used to, but it’s also one of the only sexy long-sleeved things she owns. Plus, it perfectly matches her favorite cranberry lipstick. “But you better not run off with him and leave me alone tonight. This is supposed to be _our_ night. If you use me as a third wheel, I’ll tell Octavia everything.”

“Of course not!”

True to his word, Monty gets them in without a hitch and they’re on the dance floor in no time. They get a bit more booze into their systems and she’s enjoying getting lost in the music.

And out of nowhere she sees him. He’s already staring when her eyes find him at the bar. She looks away quickly, because at her core Clarke Griffin is terrified of all things related to feelings, and there is definitely an odd amount of feeling involved when this freckled stranger is involved.

It has been _months_. Months since she has seen him, and yet here are the butterflies again.

One more shot of Monty’s smuggled holiday blend as he takes off to find his “friend” and Clarke forgets such trepidations.

Her mind is muddled and she doesn’t know how to approach him, so she settles for the familiar and touches his arm, the one she once drew on.

“Do you need this arm for anything?”

He cracks a half grin and looks at her with his head tilted so his dark curls dance at his eyelids. It shouldn’t be so familiar, and it definitely shouldn’t make her heart squeeze.

“In general?” She thinks that’s exactly what he said last time, the first time they spoke.

Clarke waves over the bartender and asks for a pen, and gets one immediately. She runs her fingers lightly over his forearm beginning to draw.

“You know who I am?” She knows it’s stupid and that her voice is flirty, but Monty has already found his roommate guy, and she’s too tipsy to pretend she doesn’t want something from him, even if it’s just his attention.

“Can’t forget the crazy chick who drew a skeleton on my forearm,” he answers jokingly before finishing the last of his bottle. His voice is low and rumbly and she wants to feel it.

“Great, then there’s no need for introductions. Buy me a drink?”

\--

Bellamy just came out tonight because Miller is on music and the apartment is dull. He’s making conversation with a brunette at the bar when he sees her. He’s seen her in a number of settings, but never like this. When he saw her on the jumbotron he’d been struck by the way excitement was fire in her eyes and her smile was bigger than the state of Texas. Now she’s dancing and laughing and _gorgeous_ , and he wonders how she’s more so every time he sees her.

The brunette he left hanging mid-conversation leaves in a huff, and he hardly noticed. (That should probably be a bigger deal, since she was practically screaming “I’ll go home with you if you ask”, but he doesn’t care in the slightest. And _that_ should scare him more than it does too.)

They make light conversation over Miller’s blasting music as he leans on the bar and she sits on a stool. Her fingers are light on his arm as she sketches the familiar anatomy of it, and he’s as mesmerized as the first time. She names them as she goes, confident despite intoxication.

“I aced that test. You’re a great study partner.”

He buys them two rounds of drinks, and in the time between they drift closer. Bellamy is so close he can feel the heat radiating off her skin and smell something sweet that might be her hair. She’s talking and drawing and it’s got his heart beating unsteadily; he’s not trying to look at her lips but it keeps happening.

When she meets his gaze with her stunningly blue eyes, he kisses her. It’s clumsy because neither of them is sober and she’s surprised, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good.

It gets better when she stands up and presses herself against him.

She breaks it off suddenly and pulls him to dance, and their bodies hardly separate for an amount of time that he can only judge by the changes in music. He learns that she likes his mouth on her neck. He hasn’t shaved today and the lightness of her skin goes rosy where they’ve met. Bellamy likes that almost as much as the little noise she makes when he pulls away.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he says, eyes locked on her lips.

Her movements slow down and her expression looks disappointed. “I can’t I, uh, I came here with someone…”

“I don’t see him around.”

“No, it’s not like that, I just…” She’s looking at his mouth now. “Let’s just do this.”

Bellamy comes to terms with the fact that he isn’t getting laid tonight. Why they hell isn’t he more disappointed? They’re just dancing and making out, and he’s completely content. Fuck.

They have some more drinks, spend more time physically attached, and separate eventually when her friend retrieves her as Miller’s voice announces the last song.

She’s gone suddenly and he’s left in a closing bar, wondering how the hell she turned out to be goddamn Cinderella.

 

 

\---

**Wouldn’t that be nuts?**

(February 2016)

“Who is ‘Flamingo’?”

“Give me that!” Clarke snatches her phone from Monty. “You’re supposed to be doing the even problems, not going through my contacts.”

“Yeah, but your contact list is far more interesting. How do you even know who anyone is?”

“Flamingo isn’t a who, it’s a store back home. My contacts make perfect sense to me.”

“Some of them are just emojis,” Monty argues back, flashing a contact that is just a string of weather-related emojis.

“That’s a guy I met at the career fair; he was at the meteorology booth. How was I going to remember who the hell he was if I just put his basic white guy name in there?”

“You have Bellamy’s number?”

“Um, yeah, Octavia put it in.”

“You guys have a pretty long conversation going.”

“Get out of my messages,” she whisper-shouts, aware of her surroundings even though her study partner isn’t. There is a girl a table over sending glares at them every time they speak and Clarke is not in the mood for confrontation.

“Fine here,” he surrenders the phone finally. “You haven’t met him, though, have you?”

Clarke confirms this while stashing her phone out of his reach.

“You know, that guy you were all over at the bar last weekend kind of look like him.”

Clarke’s gaze snaps to his quickly. “Like Bellamy?”

“Wouldn’t that be nuts? If you made out with Octavia’s brother without knowing it was him? Then she’d have two friends who’ve been all over him. She’d probably go off the edge and kill you both.”

Monty’s laugh is significantly louder than Clarke’s, who is more concerned than amused.

“Do you think it could have been him? I never got his name.”

“Nah, Nathan said Bellamy was supposed to come but never showed. Plus, I was too drunk by the time I saw your guy to really recognize any features. I just thought there were similarities.”

A girl passes by and gives them a pointedly nasty look before reclaiming her chair near them. They snicker but shut up, returning to their study session.

 

 

\---

**Spotify Connections**

(February, 2016)

“Normally I would say you’re the only freak in the world who listens to this kind of shit,” Octavia criticizes. “Star Wars music is weird enough without being jazz.”

Bellamy spent all his free time for three weekends setting up this new speaker system and he loves it. But if anyone ever invented a system that could block out other noise, particularly that of his sister, he would rip this one out and start from scratch.

“But,” she continues, pausing his fantasies of noise cancelation, “I think Clarke was listening to this _exact_ song today.”

“Not a song, exactly, it’s—”

“ _It’s a piece,_ yeah I know. Goddamn, you two are annoying. Clarke said the same thing. What even is this?” She stands in the middle of the room and glares at each of the speakers in turn as if they would answer her.

“It’s jazz covers of movie scores. It’s good for concentrating.”

Octavia snorts. “She said that too. Apparently she can study to it without falling asleep. It’s a good thing you two have never met, you might merge to form a super nerd. I’m using your shower.”

His sister leaves the room before he can explain that it was, in fact, her roommate who suggested the playlist to him.

_the princess, 02:36:54_

_It’s nice to have something interesting to listen to while studying that won’t put me to sleep_

_**Me** , 02:37:14_

_yep Mozart is a snoozer_

**_the princess_** , _02:41:13_

_Here’s what I’m listening to now. It’s old-style jazz covers of movie scores._

_https://open.spotify.com/0334830/playlist3352_

_02:42:29_

_Check out Hedwig’s Theme_

February 13, 2016

_**Me** , 08:09:12_

_Fell asleep, will listen after class_

**_the princess_** _, 11:22:17_

_How the hell do you function that early in the morning?_

 

 

\---

**You get the A, I get a date**

(March 2016)

“Mind if I join?”

Clarke is frazzled to say the least. No one but the waitress has spoken to her in hours, and they have gotten their communication down to a refill and a grateful nod, so it hardly counts. She has so much coffee and information in her system that she might really explode. So when _he_ speaks to her, it is all kinds of jarring.

“Um yeah of course! I won’t be good company, though. I have this _huge_ test tomorrow and I need an 87 to be exempt from the final, which is cumulative so…sorry, I’m babbling. Yeah, join me!”

He slides into the seat across from her, politely excusing the waitress as she approaches. “Well, I’ve been told that I’m a good study partner. What’s the subject?”

“Pretty much everything related to embryology.”

“Cutting edge stuff. You got flash cards or something? I can quiz you. Don’t take this the wrong way but you look like you should maybe take a break from the furious note taking. And from the coffee.”

He slides the remnants of what could easily be Clarke’s tenth refill away from her reach.

“Or I could just sit here,” he continues. “I brought a book.”

Clarke’s mind is too preoccupied with the details of vertebrate embryo development to give thought to the fact that _he_ is here or to allow the memory of his hands on her body to resurface – though it is fighting its way back into her overcrowded mind.

“Honestly, you’re right.” She stares for a moment at the coffee cup that’s now out of her reach, then back at him, blinking her way out of her own thoughts. “Would you mind helping me out?”

“Not at all, let me have it. I’m all yours.”

He takes the notes and begins to quiz her. Clarke sits back, tries to keep her legs from shaking, and gives as many answers as she can. He doesn’t know the material but he comes up with a clever mnemonic for everything she can’t remember.

“I used to do this for my little sister a lot,” he comments on that.

~

They stay there until the sun is casting golden rays over the café tables, leaving an overworked Clarke hot and squinting. He suggests they wrap up and helps reorganize her notes.

“I think you’ll do great. You’ve got this down.”

“I’ll owe it all to you if I do.”

“How soon do you get the results,” he asks with actual interest as they clear the table.

“I take it at 11 tomorrow in class, but it’s online so I get the results right after submitting.”

Clarke is mentally diagraming the differences between the blastula and gastrula in bilateral animals while searching for the ninth page of her notes.

“I have a proposition for you. I’ll be there when you get out, and if you get the grade you need, I get your name, number, and a proper date.”

This fully rips Clarke into the present.

He is standing there in the golden light of the setting sun, in the middle of her favorite off-beat coffee shop, glasses perched precariously in his messy curls, waiting for a response.

“Yeah that— that sounds amazing. I’d love that.”

“Alright, where do you take the test?”

“Quincy Hall, third floor, 11 a.m.”

“Then I’ll be waiting outside for you when you’re done. You’re going to kill it.”

With that he walks out the door, leaving behind a very flustered pre-med student. She leaves a hefty tip at the counter for her coffee supplier (whose shift ended ages ago,) gathers her things, and tries not to smile like an idiot.

 

 

\--

**Out of nowhere and into my life**

(March 2016)

“Let’s go grab food from Taco Bell later, I need to start this weekend with a quesarito,” Octavia says to Monty, who is on the other end of a FaceTime call. “Griffin, you want to come with us? We can wait ‘’til you get out of that test.”

Clarke is combing through her freshly washed hair, trying to keep herself from turning to her notes once again; if she doesn’t know something by now, last-minute cramming can’t save her. If anything, she would probably get more confused.

“Hey space-brain,” Octavia calls again. “Lunch? After class?”

“Oh, I uh…I kind of have plans already, I think.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I made plans with a guy but I don’t know how because I kind of let him do all the talking. So, yeah. Busy, sorry.”

“ _Clarke!”_ Octavia squeals, simultaneous with Monty’s (much more subdued,) “Is it the guy from Grounders?”

“Guy from Grounders? When did you two go to _Grounders?_ ”

“I definitely told you about this, the guy that I drew on once then danced with while drunk.”

“Wait, I thought you didn’t even have his name, how do you have plans?”

“It’s complicated, we ran into each other and he helped me study—”

Monty awe-s and Octavia starts complaining about being out of the loop.

“—But I really have to go guys. Test time. He’s kind of not the priority right now, this test is crucial. Wish me luck!”

“Good luck,” Monty says from the phone in time with Octavia saying, “If you think I’m not coming to spy on your mystery date from the bushes, you’re nuts.”

~

Clarke wizzes through the test. She feels lucky, knowing the answers to the first few questions, then suddenly she’s almost done and the luck hasn’t worn off. Two essay questions and, suddenly, it’s over. She hits submit, watches the “processing” symbol spin, and waits.

 _93.4, A,_ flashes on the screen and she barely contains her yelp of joy.

She practically runs out of the classroom, down the hall, out the door, and—

He’s there at the bottom of a steps, leaning against the railing, reading. When he looks up and smiles at her, she can’t help it: she sort of jumps him.

He catches her and when she tells him, he says, “Yeah, I knew that’s how it would go.”

So she kisses him, feet off the ground, arms around his neck. He’s smiling widely but holds nothing back, nonetheless.

“Hi,” Clarke says in a breath, pulling away from his lips just far enough. She’s just staring at his face, freckled and beaming at her. “I’m Clarke.”

“Hi Clarke, I’m—”

“ _Bellamy?!_ ”

It’s Octavia’s voice, that’s for sure, but Clarke is so shocked at the sound of it in this moment that she can’t really be sure.

“O?” This comes out of his mouth, and Clarke is sent into such world-altering dissonance she can’t even make sense of it. Octavia is half-running down the sidewalk.

“Clarke? Bellamy, what the hell? When did you two even meet? Why are you making out?!”

Clarke finally catches up.

“Bellamy?” He turns fully to her, ignoring Octavia, his _sister._ “You’re _Bellamy_?”

She pulls out her phone and starts scrolling through the texts she’s exchanged with Octavia’s brother over the past months so he can see it.

“You’re _this_ Bellamy?”

“You’re _Clarke_?”

Octavia hasn’t stopped gaping. “When did you two start texting? _What is going on?_ ”

But Clarke is barely listening. She’s surprised, but…somehow she isn’t, at the same time. It just makes sense. This is _Bellamy_ , the guy who likes her nerdiest music choices, who understands her literary jokes, who texts her when she’s fighting with her best friend, who she enjoyed talking about nothing with over the phone, who wishes her Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year even though they’ve never technically met, who makes her stupid heart flutter with the smallest typed messages. Bellamy is the stranger who let her draw on his arm, who wasn’t a jerk when she said she wasn’t interested in going home with him, who sat in a café booth for hours and helped her study.

Of course he is.

She can’t stop the smile that feels like its cracking the bones of her face, or the stinging in her eyes. “Bellamy.”

“Clarke,” he whispers back, his voice full of awe, eyes wide and taking in every inch of her face.

“Okay, you two have a long ass story to tell,” Octavia interjects, but they both ignore her.

“Hi, Bellamy,” Clarke says. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Hey, Princess,” Bellamy says back, smiling now, too.

The next kiss is even more passionate than any of their others, and if Octavia had not been so concerned with sending videos of it to literally everyone they knew, she definitely would have vomited.


End file.
